Annual Report 2024

Accountability is Agency

Justice
Agency
Power

Accountability Counsel shifts power to communities.

We strive to create a world where people and our planet are prioritized over profits.

Where powerful institutions are responsive to the needs of communities. And where the global financial system respects human and environmental rights.

Haiti

Credit: Marilia Leti, Action Aid

Credit: Desiree Koppes

Money is power, and we hold power accountable.

As experts in strategies to demand justice, we work alongside those whose rights, livelihoods, and environment are under threat by the world’s wealthiest, most powerful investors. We specialize in channels that amplify communities’ voices to be heard at the highest levels of power – shifting it back to those who know the impact of an investment on their land and lives best.

Our community cases drive direct impact for families around the world. Our research exposes patterns of harmful investment and illuminates systemic barriers to accountability. Our policy advocacy leverages lessons from our casework and research to change systems at scale. Case by case, and investor by investor, we shift power to communities to build a more just financial system.

Kenya

Our Team

Our Vision

Our Strategy

Our work alongside communities all over the world shows what accountability means in practice.

Accountability is

a healthy environment.

Along Kenya’s eastern coast, Lamu is the oldest and best preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa – a UNESCO heritage site. It is home to farmers, fishers, and herders, as well as delicate mangrove forests that help prevent erosion and flooding and act as nursery habitats for local fisheries.

Kenya

This historic region faced devastation from a massive coal-fired power plant – just one aspect of an even larger planned mega-project of oil refineries, pipelines, petrochemical factories and a deep sea port – all of which would renew reliance on fossil fuels and devastate the ecosystems, culture, and way of life that the communities of Lamu have stewarded for centuries.

The people of Lamu organized, and with support from Accountability Counsel and a coalition of experts, they pressured the project’s investors, one by one, to divest from the coal plant. Their advocacy prevented irreparable habitat destruction and halted the construction of what would have been East Africa’s largest coal plant – ensuring a healthy environment for future generations in these coastal communities.

Learn more in a new documentary, Guardians of Lamu!

Watch it now

Accountability is

durable climate solutions.

Communities in the verdant highlands of Lesotho are surrounded by water – water so valuable to the South African economy that it is dammed, diverted, and transferred there at a rate of more than 700 million cubic meters per year to refill drought-drained reservoirs. While their homes and pastures are submerged beneath Africa’s largest water transfer project, the communities in Lesotho are left to wait in line for hours to fill buckets from polluted pools and springs, often getting sick from contamination.

This project, and many others like it, risks harming one community to save another – a trade off that people and our planet can’t afford, and that can best be prevented by incorporating the voices of everyone a project impacts.

As investors take steps to build yet another dam while their promises to provide clean water remain unfulfilled, Accountability Counsel is supporting the communities in Lesotho to demand a chance to share equitably in the project’s benefits. By demanding accountability, they are shifting this climate resilience project to create a better, more just, and ultimately more durable climate solution.

Lesotho

Credit: Mareike Mgwelo

Accountability is

gender justice.

For fourteen-year-old Esther (name changed for her safety), school was supposed to be a safe place to learn. But when she survived sexual abuse by her teacher, it was anything but safe. Across Kenya, other students had endured similar abuse at schools run by the company Bridge International Academies, which was backed by major philanthropists and public development dollars. When the girls and their families reported the abuse, the schools failed to take appropriate action, and many of the schools' investors turned a blind eye.

Esther and the other survivors sought support from Accountability Counsel to hold the schools’ investors accountable for the harm they experienced. We counseled the brave students as they first defined their vision of remedy and justice, and then shared their clear and actionable demands directly with the investors – forcing powerful decision makers to acknowledge the survivors and take their rights seriously.

Nepal

Haiti

These students are not alone: with support from Accountability Counsel, women in Liberia, Haiti, India, and around the world have demanded justice when investments have exposed them to gender-based violence. Through accountability channels, they have described to investors what gender justice means in their own words: remedy, protection, and opportunities for them and other women and girls like them to thrive.

Accountability is

data-powered advocacy.

Over the past thirty years, more than 2,000 communities around the world have raised their voices and filed complaints to investors, demanding justice for rights abuses and environmental destruction. Accountability Counsel has collected every one of those complaints and compiled them into a free database, creating a powerful body of accessible data that shines light on the harm communities face and the barriers that make it difficult to hold those responsible to account.

Morocco

We leverage that data in countless ways: by analyzing regional complaint volume, we assessed barriers to accountability in the Middle East and North Africa. By combining case data with lessons from communities who have reached agreements with investors, we can see what factors contribute to a successful complaint. Now, we’re working to draw from both complaint data and in-depth analysis of institutions’ policies to create an AI-powered complaint builder that can walk communities through the filing process and equip them with data-informed advice to bypass known barriers to accountability.

Haiti

By democratizing data and leveraging the power of AI for good, communities and advocates around the world can learn from those who have sought justice before them, drawing on a global network of knowledge to inform and strengthen communities as they demand accountability at scale.

Accountability is

clean water.

Families in Mongolia’s South Gobi Desert have kept livestock for generations. Alongside their herds of goats, sheep, and camels, they move their homes, called gers, to new pastures every few weeks. Their traditional way of life depends on the water of the Undai River and its underground aquifers – scarce and precious resources in the high-altitude desert.

Since 2012, the river has been dammed, rerouted, and polluted by the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine – draining dozens of wells and endangering the herders’ livelihoods. In 2022, the mine finally acknowledged publicly what community leaders had long feared: its waste storage facility had been leaking harmful chemicals into the nearby riverbed for years, endangering groundwater that herders and their animals rely on.

Mongolia

Accountability Counsel is advising herders as they take on the mining company to defend their land, lives, and livelihoods. As a result of the community’s advocacy, the mine’s investors are requiring new assessments of the mine’s impacts on the local water supply and improved facilities to prevent future pollution. By leveraging the money behind the mine, the herders are protecting their clean water now and for the future.

Accountability is

sustainable livelihoods.

Less than two years after a devastating earthquake, farmers along Haiti’s fertile northeastern coast were rebuilding their lives. But in 2012, they were evicted from their land without warning to make way for a 607-acre garment factory, fast-tracked after the earthquake as a solvent for economic growth.

Haiti

Credit: Marilia Leti, Action Aid

The loss of these farmers' land was devastating: over 4,000 people were suddenly without their livelihoods and the regular meals and income they provided. Many families faced food insecurity and could no longer pay for their children’s education.

Supported by legal advice and expertise from Accountability Counsel and a coalition of advocates, the communities organized and negotiated directly with the project’s investors and the Haitian government to secure an historic remedy agreement, including new land to replace the farms they lost. As of this year, more than fifty families have received new farms, restoring their livelihoods and marking a major step toward justice.

Learn more in a new report, After the Agreement!

Read it now

Accountability is

civic participation.

Accountability channels strengthen civic participation by connecting people with powerful decision-makers. They are critical tools for communities who are systematically denied power to make their voices heard, to challenge inequitable investments, and to change unjust systems.

At the height of the COVID pandemic, a Ugandan community, already hemmed in on three sides by massive infrastructure projects, woke early one morning to find bulldozers threatening their homes to make way for a World Bank-funded drainage channel. The project, set to be implemented by a local government agency, would have evicted the residents, destroyed their farms, and robbed them of their livelihoods.

Uganda

With support from Accountability Counsel, the community organized to protect their homes and secure compensation by engaging with their government through a brand-new accountability channel.

In coming together to demand justice, these neighbors strengthened their community, empowered collective mobilization, and made space for civic participation by speaking up and speaking out in defense of their rights.

Accountability is

accessible justice.

In the mountains of Nepal, a high-voltage power line would run straight through the homes, forests, and communal spaces of the region’s Indigenous residents. The communities did not consent to the project, and their peaceful protest was met with violent retaliation.

With support from Accountability Counsel, these Indigenous communities have demanded justice from the power line’s investors, using accountability channels tied to the institutions to make their voices heard at the highest levels of power. Now, they are in dialogue with the European Investment Bank and Nepalese state agencies to defend their rights, forests, and homes.

All over the world, countless other communities face harm from similar projects – but if those projects are financed by investors that have no channel to hear from the people they impact, communities are left with inadequate options for recourse.

Accountability Counsel has already pushed over 160 investors to establish accountability channels, and we will keep advocating until every investor has one – because all communities deserve accessible justice, no matter who the investor is.

Nepal

Accountability Counsel’s fifteen years of global impact

Supported

142

communities to demand justice

Pushed

162

institutions to commit to accountability

Shifted power to

3.5

people worldwide

As Accountability Counsel marks fifteen years, we are honored to celebrate the friends and advocates who have accompanied our journey, the lessons learned and challenges faced, and every small, hard-earned step toward justice.

We began as a team of two advocates taking on our first cases in Mexico and Peru, amplifying the voices of communities in Oaxaca and the Amazon in defense of their rights and environment.

Over the years, alongside our growing body of casework, we added new expertise to drive our research and policy advocacy, seeking to shift the system at the same time as we support communities to navigate it. As the field has grown, we have too – today, we are thrilled to be a team of more than twenty powerful advocates across ten countries.

Nepal

Making a difference together

I worked with Accountability Counsel in 2010 on one of its first cases that protected freshwater in Oaxaca, Mexico. Since then, and in my role as a director on the board, I’ve seen Accountability Counsel contribute to justice movements globally.

Fernanda Venzon

Board Director, Brazil

We strive for our advocacy to be inclusive – our demands of financial institutions are rooted in and include feedback from impacted communities.

Stephanie Amoako

Policy Director, United States

Impacted communities make the decisions about whether and how to pursue cases. Our advocacy respects their agency.

Robi Chacha Mosenda

Senior Communities Associate

When community members come together to demand accountability, they build collective power and determine their own future. It’s an immense honor to be a part of a people-powered movement.

Sutharee Wannasiri

Communities Associate, Thailand

Thank you to our incredible community.

You champion our movement for people and the planet.

11th Hour Project

Anonymous (1)

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

David and Anita Keller Foundation

Elizabeth R. & William J. Patterson Foundation

Environmental Defenders Collaborative

Ford Foundation

Global Commons Alliance

Luminate

Open Society Foundations

Porticus

Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Sall Family Foundation

Woodcock Foundation

Eduardo Abbott

Amanda Amoako

Anonymous Donor (2)

Joanne Bauer

Anne Bellows

Lauren & Joshua Benjamin

Daniel Bradlow

Natalie & Carter Fields

Sandy Coliver

Gary Cookhorn

Stephen Diamond

Andrew Dickson

Jonathan Fox

Julia & John Griffin

David Hunter & Margaret Bowman

Faith Horowitz & Richard Speizman

Richard Jaffe

Sujatha Jesudason

Michael Kaufman

Daniel Keller

Alaina Kipps

Marty Krasney

James Marciano

Micheline Markey

Yvonne Moore

Doug Norlen

Anne & Jamie O'Connell

Charles Grady Pearson

JaMel & Tom Perkins Family Foundation Fund

Nancy Quinn & Thomas Driscoll

Robert Reichenbach

Ellen & Steve Rosenblum

Kaitlyn & Ian Shannon

Kim Smaczniak & Tarun Theogaraj

Joe Timko

Beth Van Schaack & Brent Lang

Sara Zion & Tushar Shah

Apple, Inc.

BlackRock

Covington & Burling

Healy & Associates

FY24 Financials

During fiscal year 2023–2024, Accountability Counsel shifted our fiscal year end from August to June, resulting in a shortened ten-month year.

Expenses

2801928

Communities

Policy

Research

Administration

Fundraising

$365,218

$593,628

$704,257

$918,585

$220,240

Revenue

897800

Foundations

Pro Bono & In Kind

Individual Contributions

Other Income

Corporate Contributions

$42,734

$43,676

$102,328

$3,050

$706,012